GERALDINE GREEN.
I.
THE SERENADE.
Light slumber is quitting
The eyelids it pressed,
The fairies are flitting,
Who charmed thee to rest:
Where night-dews were falling
Now feeds the wild bee,
The starling is calling,
My Darling, for thee.
The wavelets are crisper
That sway the shy fern,
The leaves fondly whisper,
"We wait thy return."
Arise then, and hazy
Distrust from thee fling,
For sorrows that crazy
To-morrows may bring.
A vague yearning smote us—
But wake not to weep,
My bark, love, shall float us
Across the still deep,
To isles where the lotos,
Erst lulled thee to sleep.
II.
MY LIFE IS A ——
At Worthing an exile from Geraldine G——,
How aimless, how wretched an exile is he!
Promenades are not even prunella and leather
To lovers, if lovers can't foot them together.
He flies the parade, sad by ocean he stands,
He traces a "Geraldine G." on the sands,
Only "G!" though her loved patronymic is "Green,"—
I will not betray thee, my own Geraldine.
The fortunes of men have a time and a tide,
And Fate, the old Fury, will not be denied;
That name was, of course, soon wiped out by the sea,—
She jilted the exile, did Geraldine G.
They meet, but they never have spoken since that,—
He hopes she is happy—he knows she is fat;
She woo'd on the shore, now is wed in the Strand,—
And I—it was I wrote her name on the sand!